Teresa Odendahl

Teresa Odendahl "has 25 years experience in the foundation and nonprofit community as a board member, CEO, critic, employee, trainer and researcher. From 2004-2005, she was the Waldemar A. Neilsen Chair in Philanthropy at the Georgetown University Public Policy Institute in Washington, D.C.  She is also Co-Founder of the new Institute for Collaborative Change and was recently Senior Program Officer at The Wyss Foundation in Santa Fe, New Mexico.  For the previous decade, she served as Executive Director of the National Network of Grantmakers where she led a campaign to increase foundation payout.  Odendahl has also been Executive Director of two women’s funds, the Business and Professional Women's Foundation and the Women's Foundation of Colorado.  She served on the faculties of Yale University’s Program on Nonprofit Organizations and the University of California, San Diego Women’s Studies Program. She received her Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology in 1982 from the University of Colorado, Boulder. "Odendahl is author of Charity Begins at Home: Generosity and Self-Interest Among the Philanthropic Elite (Basic Books, 1990), co-author with Elizabeth Boris and Arlene Kaplan Daniels of Working in Foundations: Career Patterns of Women and Men (Foundation Center, 1985), editor and contributor to America’s Wealthy and the Future of Foundations (Foundation Center, 1987), co-editor and contributor with Michael O'Neill of Women and Power in the Nonprofit Sector (Jossey-Bass, 1994), and numerous other publications. Odendahl co-authored the report “The Meaning and Impact of Board and Staff Diversity in the Foundation Field” (Joint Affinity Groups, 2002) with Lynn Burbridge, William Diaz, and Aileen Shaw. "Odendahl is [former] Chair of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy and Treasurer of the Center for Economic Justice. She is a co-founder of the Institute for Women's Policy Research and serves on their Honorary Board."


 * President, New Mexico Association of Grantmakers